Sunday, October 17, 22:20 CDT
I saw American Beauty again Friday night, followed by Fight
Club...

Wow.

Fight Club is impressive. Disturbing, unsettling, and darkly
funny. The sort of thing that's going to have lots of people in an uproar and
completely missing the valid points it makes in the midst of ideas they
find abhorent. A movie that makes you *think*, or at least it should. It's
also got an excellent visual and narrative style... Interesting to note that
both this and American Beauty, probably the two best movies of the year,
use voiceover narration to great effect. How often do you see that? Unlike
AB, of course, lots of people will actually listen to me when I tell them they
should see Fight Club - it's easily marketable as an action flick,
it's got violence and Brad Pitt, and it's rife with quotable dialog.
("The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about...", well,
you've seen the trailer.)

After I got home from the theater, I read the last 50 pages or so of
Sailing to Sarantium, Guy G. Kay's most recent novel. It's set in the
same world as The Lions of Al-Rassan, though in a setting and period
based on the Byzantine Empire under the rule of Justinian. Very much worth
reading (if Kay's ever written anything that *isn't*, I'm unaware of it), but
since it's the first in a series (trilogy?), I won't try to judge it as a
stand alone novel.

I'm going to have to re-read Tigana and The Lions of
Al-Rassan fairly soon, I think. And it's been almost a year since I read
the LotR... (Actually, it was October 18 when I mentioned it here.)

I also finished The Big U. Not a great book, but definitely a good
one, with some cool moments. And some giant rats. And a rail gun. I can see
why Stephenson wouldn't want this to be considered in the same light as his
newer stuff (well, everything he's written since then), but I'd like to
see it re-issued at some point. It'd be worth owning a paperback copy. Anyway,
if you're interested in reading it, inter-library loan is worth a try.